Posts Tagged ‘unschooling’

Lately I have began to think more and more about my daughter starting school (and in fact my son one year after). In all honesty the more I think about it, the more I dread it! My husband does too infact!

I hated school! As a preschool child, or so I have been told, I was very intelligent, but wierd! My first memories of school are of crying because I didn’t want to sit down in assembly. The work in school, I found boring and unchallenging. All the other children knew each other but I had moved there from Carlisle so didn’t know anyone and had a funny accent.

My husband had worse experiences of school. He was bullied and excluded by the other children, yet although the teachers noticed, they did nothing about it.

What bothers me now about school is the emphasis on achievement even from the foundation stage. The whole importance of conforming and not recognising children as individuals. I think young children should learn through experiential learning rather than following a curriculum. Even before I had the children I remember learning about schools which didn’t follow a curriculum but followed a humanistic and holistic approach to learning (I can’t remember the name though.) I thought what a good idea this would be and how I would have loved to learn in this way.

As much as I try not to also, I am terrified about my children being bullied. It is impossible not to be, there are so many horror stories and teachers are afraid to do anything these days.

I have done my best to socialize my children. They have lots of friends and my days off are spent either seeing friends, in playgroup or in the park or soft play. Hopefully they will learn to socialize and to stick up for themselves. However I still have this worry!

In an ideal world I would love my children to go to a small independent school such as a Steiner or Montessori school but even if there were any round here I wouldn’t be able to afford it.

So Homeschooling is the alternative. The fact I would even consider it is pretty mad. You see I am pretty much Miss Mainstream. I read New magazine, watch Xfactor and the soaps and shop in Primark (and Topshop when funds allow). Nor am I by any means middle class. My children were formula fed, they eat chicken nuggets and smiley faces. I am not a person who one would even imagine would consider anything so radical as homeschooling. Most people who know me would think I needed sectioning or something to even think of the idea seeing as most of my Facebook statuses consist of things like ‘OMG how long til bedtime?’ or ‘aargh these kids are driving me mad’.

However they are my babies and I want the best in life for them. I want them to be happy, confident and enjoy life so I dread sending them to main stream school.